Horace Campbell is Professor of African American Studies and Political Science at Syracuse University. His recent book is Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya. He is author of: Rasta and Resistance From Marcus Garvey to Walter Rodney; Reclaiming Zimbabwe: The Exhaustion of the Patriarchal Model of Liberation; Pan Africanism, Pan Africanists and African Liberation in the 21st Century; and Barack Obama and 21st Century Politics. Follow on Twitter @Horace_Campbell.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Counter-terrorism and imperial hypocrisy: Lessons from the kidnapping of Abu Anas al-Liby

The information that Abu Anas al-Liby is now facing trial on charges of
terrorism in New York enlarges the story of the terrorism and hypocrisy
of the Global War on Terror that is being fought by the United States
along with its pliant allies in Europe and the Gulf Corporation Council
(GCC). Abu Anas al-Liby also known as Nazih Abdul Hamed al Ruqai was
snatched from the streets of Tripoli on 5 October. The western media
made much ado about the capture of the so called ‘high value target,’
but the history of the collaboration between the organizations
represented by this person and the intelligence services of the NATO
militarists exposes the ways in which the selective use of
counter-terror activities has been used by the western military forces
to maintain the so called War on Terror. In our submission this week we
again reflect on the destruction of Libya by the NATO forces and restate
the call for the Security Council of the United Nations to carry out a
thorough audit of the NATO operations in Libya and the aftermath that
has brought destruction and 1700 militias making life unbearable for
ordinary Libyans.

WHO IS ABU ANAS AL-LIBY?

From the major news outlets such as CNN, Abu Anas al-Liby is an alleged
al Qaeda operative who is now accused before the Federal Court of New
York of playing a role in the 1998 US al-Liby Embassy bombings in Kenya
and Tanzania. He pleaded not guilty Tuesday 22 October, 2013 to
terrorism charges. Peace activists from all parts of the world will be
following this case very closely because what the media has not
disclosed to the majority of US citizens is the fact that for more than
two decades this so called terrorists had been known to the British to
the point of being part of elements supported by British intelligence
forces to assassinate Col. Muamar Gaddafi. It is from the conservative
British newspaper, ‘The Telegraph’, where we can read the details of how
al-Libywas a member of a
[url=http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/libya/10359319/Abu-Anas-al-Libi-al-Qaeda-kingpin-caught-in-Libya-was-released-by-British-police-before-going-on-the-run.html
‘Libyan al-Qaeda cell that received hundreds of thousands of pounds
from British intelligence to assassinate Gaddafi in an ultimately
unsuccessful plot[/url].’ Those with a very short memory will not
remember that the obscure Islamic extremists such as Osama Bin Laden had
been recruited by the Central Intelligence Agency in the Cold War era.
This anti-communist agenda had drawn the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt
into close collaboration with the CIA and it was the infrastructure of
this global force of cold blooded killers that was mobilized
internationally against socialism. Those forces that later came to be
called Al Qaeda were trained and armed by the CIA in the same way that
they trained and armed the deadly Contras to kill and maim innocent
civilians in Central America. The more than US $50 billion that had been
poured into this anti-communist war by the United States and Saudi
Arabia ensured Osama Bin Laden learned the tricks of the trade of
recruitment, surveillance and propaganda. Two French journalists with
inside information on the anti-communist collaboration had written the
book, ‘Forbidden Truth: US -Taliban Secret Oil Diplomacy, Saudi Arabia
and the Failed Search for bin Laden.’ According to the British press,
alLiby had been part of the group of young Libyans around Osama Bin
Laden. For the West, these young Libyans were being monitored and kept
in close range in preparation for another alliance between the western
intelligence agencies and those who were plotting inside Libya to kill
Muamar Gaddafi.

In the early nineties as the British and North American forces plotted
against Libya, al-Liby was granted political asylum in the United
Kingdom, and took up residence in Manchester. From the various press
reports we learned that while in the UK, he honed his photographic and
computer skills.

THE TWISTS AND TURNS OF WESTERN INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES

How could al-Liby be arrested by the British Scotland Yard in 1999 after
the Nairobi bombings in 1998 and then released? The answer lay in the
fact that in 1999 the goal of killing Gaddafi was a higher priority than
the killing of innocent Africans in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam. In 2002,
it was revealed that six years earlier al-Liby had been a key figure in
a Libyan Islamic Fighting Group cell that was paid large sums of money
by the British intelligence service, MI6, for an abortive plot to
assassinate Gaddafi.

The Libya Islamic Fighting Group was one of the many ‘terrorist’
organizations that had been working with western Intelligence agencies
and this work came out in full during the NATO intervention to destroy
Libyan society. Al-Liby had been included on the FBI's most wanted
terrorists list which was introduced shortly after the attacks of 11
September, 2001, and a US $5 million dollar reward had been placed on
his head. Yet, before and after the NATO intervention the West made no
moves to apprehend this ‘terrorist’ who had ‘fled’ Britain in 1999 after
he had been released by Scotland Yard.

It is now clear that the Western Intelligence agencies have a full
dossier of their former collaborators who they roll out from time to
time as masterminds behind this or that terrorist attack. In June, 2011
when Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was killed in a road block in Somalia, the
western counter terrorism spin doctors wrote many stories about how
Fazuk had been the mastermind of the 1998 bombings of US embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania. At that moment the spin had been that there was an
alliance between Al Shabaab and Al Qaeda, but there was never clarity on
the interpenetration between the forces of Al Qaeda and the networks of
fighters who were being recruited by the West to fight in Syria.

FROM THE NATO INTERVENTION TO THE WESTGATE BOMBINGS IN KENYA

The NATO forces had collaborated with the ‘terrorists’ in Libya to
destroy Libya and to assassinate Gaddafi. Despite the announcement of
the ‘success’ of the mission, Libya has been plunged into perpetual
warfare, with rival militias wreaking havoc on innocent civilians. This
mayhem suited the Western intelligence forces who were recruiting
Islamic extremists from Libya to fight in Syria. The extent of the
collaboration came out in the aftermath of the killing of Ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens on 12 September, 2012, but even with the debacle of
the exposure of the CIA in Libya, the media continued to use the bogey
of terrorism to maintain high disbursements of funds to the Pentagon and
intelligence services.

Just when citizens of the West were focusing on the devastation of the
current economic crisis, the attack on the Westgate Mall in Nairobi,
Kenya brought back the rhetoric of counter-terrorism to the front pages
of newspapers. That Al Shabaab has claimed responsibility for this
attack compounds the murky world of the individuals and organizations
that can travel around the world with resources only to be told after
the act that the west knew of these individuals as terrorists. From the
description in the media of the individuals involved, there is very
little room to believe much of what has been produced in the media so
far. Less than three weeks after the Westgate bombings, al-Liby was
snatched from his home in Tripoli by US Navy Seals. Days after the
kidnapping of al-Liby in Tripoli, the Prime Minister of Libya, Ali
Zeidan was himself kidnapped.

Released a few hours later, Libyan Prime Minister Ali Zeidan said his
brief kidnap was an ‘attempted coup,’ blaming his political opponents
for the attack. In a TV address to the people of Libya, he said an
unnamed political party in the congress was behind the abduction.

These twists and turn in the sad story of the manipulation of terrorism
in Libya is only compounded by the fact that the people of Libya face
real terror from the militias that now control Libya.

THE UNITED NATIONS MUST REIN IN THE WESTERN SPONSORS AND SUPPORTERS OF TERROR AND COUNTER TERROR

In our study of the Catastrophic failure of NATO in Libya],
we joined with the peace forces around the world that called for a full
investigation of the NATO operations and the aftermath in Libya. Two
years after NATO announced that they had completed a ‘successful’
mission, the kidnapping and abduction of the Prime Minister exposed the
reality that the ‘elected government’ does not really control much of
the country. The armed groups that had been financed by Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and western intelligence agencies to destroy Libya still operate
with impunity.

The so called government of Libya has been incapable of mediating the
contending rivalries between the West and the proxies of Qatar, Saudi
Arabia and Turkey in Libya. With financial and other forms of support
from outside, the so called government of Libya has been unable to
disarm the more than 1700 militias.

It is in Benghazi where the mischief by internal and external forces is
most intense. In that part of the country, imperial forces are bent on
maintaining insecurity in anticipation of the moment when the Egyptian
revolution changes course and there is need for another base for counter
revolution. This alliance with external intelligence forces has
emboldened the militias in Benghazi who have blockaded the ports and oil
terminals over the past month, severely restricting exports of Libya's
major foreign currency earner, which mostly comes from the region.War on
Terror must cease and the links between extremists and the western
intelligence services must be exposed.

The Kidnapping of al-Liby from Libya has brought back attention to the
world that was created by the western intelligence agencies to fight in
the Reagan era. Details of the ‘Forbidden Truth’ should become every day
knowledge so that never again the intelligence agencies can manipulate
groups to create as much destruction as they have done over the past
thirty years. The machinations of the west in their dealing with these
extremists are clearly exposed in the full history of al-Liby who we now
know belonged to elements in the pay of the British intelligence
services. These elements have now used massive resources from
conservative forces in the Gulf to spread mayhem in Africa. Whatever
their origins, these extremists have created havoc in Northern Nigeria
and in Somalia. Peace activists must intensify their efforts to expose
the history of al-Liby and equally to unearth and expose the forces in
the West, Qatar and Saudi Arabia who are financing extremists in Africa.